It's the only thing you'll ever need by Geezer

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It's the only thing you'll ever need

POSTED BY: GEEZER
UPDATED: Thursday, August 30, 2012 05:25
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Thursday, August 30, 2012 3:08 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Want to defeat the Republicans at the polls in November?

Forget dressage

Forget the dog on the roof

Forget Bain

Forget underground garages

Forget all that childish stuff

Here's all you really need

http://www.scribd.com/doc/104097929/Final-Language-GOP-Platform-2012

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Thursday, August 30, 2012 4:19 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

I thought the platform contained particularly sensible ideas and language on pages 20 and 30. I firmly support the Republican party in its desire to implement the policies expressed on those pages.

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Thursday, August 30, 2012 5:25 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Sure sounds good on paper (some of it, anyway). Unfortunately, as we keep being told by Romney and Ryan, the platform is not necessarily representative of how they will govern, and may actually be bad for their efforts to get elected:

Quote:
The Republican Party adopts conservative planks that its presidential nominee disavows, a split that threatens to undercut Romney's message and drag him down

Republican convention delegates approved what some called the party's "most conservative platform in modern history" on Tuesday, demanding everything from the repeal of ObamaCare to low taxes to constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and all abortions. Presidential candidates rarely embrace everything in their party platform so the documents rarely get much attention. This year, however, the abortion plank and several other hardline stances on social issues are generating unusual interest, and more Americans are interested in the platform (52 percent) than in Romney's speech (44 percent), according to a Pew Research Center poll. Will that make the platform a liability for Romney's campaign?

Yes. The GOP platform is poison for Romney: By insisting that this is the party's platform, and not Romney's, the candidate's supporters are "trying to disown the platform before the ink is dry," says syndicated columnist Susan Estrich in California's North County Times. Sorry, but this is Romney's convention, so he has to answer for a platform that "forces rape and incest victims into maternity wards." Either Romney was too weak to "stand up to the ideologues who could drag down his campaign, or he didn't dare try."

If nothing else, the platform muddies Romney's message: Abortion isn't the platform's only culture-war land mine that could cause trouble for Romney, says Benjy Sarlin at Talking Points Memo. The GOP platform "also includes combative language regarding gay rights," an issue Team Romney is trying to sidestep to avoid "appearing bigoted in an increasingly tolerant America." By spotlighting social issues Romney "hopes to downplay in favor of the economy," the platform could make it harder for him to get out his message. "Platform could be messaging minefield for GOP" http://theweek.com/article/index/232516/gop-convention-is-the-partys-p
latform-an-albatross-for-mitt-romney

I don't see it changing any minds, especially this close to the election, and of course, as they keep reminding us, it's not ROMNEY's platform: "The official platform language poised for approval at next week's Republican National Convention doesn't fully represent the party's presumptive presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Tuesday. "This is the platform of the Republican Party; it's not the platform of Mitt Romney."

Aside from that, the wording sounds lovely but is a dead giveaway. It's written for public consumption, so it's amusing to see how they've phrased it. As egregious as some of it is, even the parts that "read well" are bullshit if you pay attention and read between the lines.

It's a shame they had to go so extreme. Like virtually everything else in this election (AND the primaries), I would have liked to have seen less extreme and more sensible words and actions.

I don't think many people will pay attention to it, especially given it's almost identical to 2004 and 2008--the media, of course, is probably already having a field day.

Mostly, it's politics as usual: "We want a roaring job market to match a roaring economy. Instead, what this Administration has given us..." yada yada. "Defending Marriage Against An Activist Judiciary. A serious threat to our country’s constitutional order, perhaps even more dangerous than presidential malfeasance, is an activist judiciary, in which some judges usurp the powers reserved to other branches of government. A blatant example has been the court-ordered redefinition of marriage in several States." And on and on.

Reading between the lines and paying attention to the wording makes for some amusement. "American Sovereignty in U.S. Courts. Subjecting American citizens to foreign laws is inimical to the spirit of the Constitution." (omigawd, here comes Sharia Law! If you have any doubt about that, "Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, also speaking at the convention, helped write a platform plank that includes supporting a ban on foreign law, which he admits targets the religious principles of Muslim Americans. The plank, which copies anti-Sharia bills pushed by extreme conservative groups, is roundly condemned as a smoke-screen for anti-Muslim bigotry. Romney has not spoken out against it.")

Given my interest lies mostly in the environmental field, I found the wording on "protecting the environment" especially cute: "Efforts to reduce pollution, encourage re-cycling, educate the public, and avoid ecological degradation have been a success. To ensure their continued support by the American people, however, we need a dramatic change in the attitude of officials in Washington, a shift from a job-killing punitive mentality to a spirit of cooperation with producers, landowners, and the public." When it comes to Our Republican Party’s Commitment to Conservation: "As the pioneer of conservation over a century ago, the Republican Party believes in the moral obligation of the people to be good stewards of the God-given natural beauty and resources of our country and bases environmental policy on several common-sense principles." "Moreover, the advance of science and technology advances environmentalism as well. Science allows us to weigh the costs and benefits of a policy so that we can prudently deal with our resources. This is especially important when the causes and long-range effects of a phenomenon are uncertain. We must restore scientific integrity to our public research institutions and remove political incentives from publicly funded research."

And on and on. I'm familiar with lawerspeak; it's very pretty to read (in some places, anyway), but the actual intent is easy to decipher. In other places, it is downright abhorrent to me.

No biggie, the only thing it does is sound pretty while giving them easy outs, and get scarily extreme in some places.

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